• Question: when is the world going to end

    Asked by matteo1998 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 15 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by bjw1472, iluvdanny44, dazza90king100j, yassinebennis, thedonishscienceexperiment115, niamhcarr, anon-22966.
    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 15 Jun 2012:

      hiya matteo – the truth is no one really knows when – there’s been lots of predictions but none have been true and its not something we’re giong to be able to predict either – but it will happen at somepoint, if for no other reason than the sun will eventually run our of energy – a long time from now!

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 17 Jun 2012:

      Hi again matteo1998, that depends on what you mean by “world”. It sure isn’t looking good for Eath!
      – Within one million years, the hypergiant Eta Carinae, which is 7500 light years from the Sun, may go hypernova and explode, taking Earth with it
      – In 1.4 million years Gliese 710 will be only 1.1 light years from Earth and might send a catastrophic comet shower our way
      – In about 3 billion years, our Milky Way galaxy is expected to collide with the Andromeda galaxy. Collisions of individual planets is unlikely, but the chances are that everything will be mixed up and Earth thrown off orbit.
      – In 5 billion years the Sun will turn into a “red giant” star as it runs out of fuel inside. It will expand and maybe engulf Earth.

      If you mean our milky way galaxy, then the collision with the Andromeda galaxy won’t help matters…

      And if you mean our universe, then we have quite a lot more time – it appears to be just expanding very very slowly and running out of energy. So one day it’ll just be very very cold and pretty lonely all round.

      But this is all a very very long way in the future! To put it into perspective, the universe has existed for just over 13 billion years, Earth for just over 4 billion years, and the human race as we know it for only about 200 thousand years. The ancient Egyptians lived 5,000 years ago and photograps have only existed for about 150 years… so peanuts really!

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